


coda

by WayDownWeGo



Series: need the sun to break [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, The Grand Finale, and it's not as welcome as you'd expect, there's a surprise "visit"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 19:58:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9009199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WayDownWeGo/pseuds/WayDownWeGo
Summary: Two weeks.We had two weeks together before somehow, some way, Steve Rogers tracked us down.





	

“Come here, you big bear,” I giggle, extending my arms out to Bucky, who is wearing a Henley shirt and a pair of basketball shorts.   
“Bear?” He quirks an eyebrow at me as he slowly makes his way across the bedroom.  
“Yes, bear. You’re all buff and macho but you’re still cuddly like a teddy bear,” I explain, and he finally gets to the end of the bed.   
He smiles and tugs on the buttons at his collar and then grabs the bottom hem of his shirt before pulling it over his head. “What does that make you?”  
“Sleepy. Come to bed already,” I whine, and he smirks, crawling up the bed on all fours.  
“Have I told you how needy you are yet?” He chuckles quietly, snuggling up next to me and pressing a kiss to my forehead.  
“No need, I’m well aware.”  
“I guess it would be hard not to be,” he says, “you’ve only let me leave the apartment what, three times since I got here?”  
I roll my eyes. “It’s for your own safety, you know that.”  
“Since when does the 24 year old know more about security, laying low, and overall paranoia than the 99 year old former army sergeant, professional assassin, and undercover agency infiltrator?”  
“Oh, hush,” I say, pressing a kiss to his lips. We settle against each other and soon we’re asleep.

I’m not sure what it is, but something wakes me up. All I know is that something feels off. I open my eyes and the bedroom is bathed in black. It’s only after I focus for a few moments that I realize that Buck isn’t breathing, that my head isn’t moving up and down on his chest—that’s probably what alerted my subconscious. I lift my head up to look at him and I jump as his hand immediately covers my mouth. In the darkness, I see him bring a silver finger to his lips. It’s almost eerie, the way it glints in the dim moonlight.   
“Shh,” he breathes, slowly releasing his hand from my mouth. His hands move to grasp either side of my head and he pulls my skull up to his mouth, leaning his own face down to meet my ear. “Stay here. Someone just tried the doorknob.” His voice is only a breath of a whisper, and it takes all of my concentration to hear what he says.   
“Wha—“  
His palm quickly covers my mouth again, and he shakes his head. He releases me and slides out of bed, and I’m actually a little amazed by his ability to move in complete silence. I watch his silhouette move from the bed to the doorway, and I notice a silver flash, only in the wrong hand. I squint in the darkness and see his Gerber Mark II in his grasp. I know he keeps it under his side of the mattress, but I didn’t hear him pull it out. He becomes a statue in the doorway, and for a moment I nearly lose sight of his silhouette, even. Thinking back to everything he’s told me, I realize that disappearing is what his training was all about. Even back to his days in the US Army as a sniper. “Hours and hours of my time were spent hiding in the brush, or in a tree, sitting so still, breathing so slow that the leaves wouldn’t even move. Turned into a living statue, invisible to the untrained eye—hell, even the trained eye.”  
I move as quietly as I can to the foot of my bed, kneeling and gripping the foot of the bedframe so tightly I don’t think the skin on the back of my hands can get any tighter. The silence roars in my ears; somehow there aren’t even any noises from the street below. It’s as quiet as the grave. The deafening silence makes it that much easier to hear the doorknob on the front door creak… and click.   
Bucky turns his head back to me, and I swear I see him glare at me before he turns his attention to the door. The door creaks open, and now that my eyes have more or less adjusted to the dark, I see Bucky go into sniper mode again. There is the faintest sound of the sole of a shoe on the wood floor, and then I can see a slice of gold appear on the back wall of the living room and the floor: the light from the hallway. I watch Bucky’s much more apparent silhouette as his arm flies up. There is a whoosh and then a wet thud, followed by someone groaning in sudden pain, shattering the silence.  
The lights are switched on and I’m blinded momentarily, squinting again. Bucky is gone from my view of the doorway and before I can get off the bed, I hear him exclaim, “Steve?!”

Two weeks.  
We had two weeks together before somehow, some way, Steve Rogers tracked us down.

I find Bucky gaping at the intruder, who is standing hunched and breathing heavily. Then I notice the knife handle protruding from his shoulder. “Oh, my god.”  
The man looks up at me, and I recognize his face immediately: it’s Captain America, plain as day. He reaches up and pulls the knife out of his shoulder with one swift movement and presses his other hand to the wound, presumably to stem the bleeding. Bucky takes a few hesitant steps towards him, and Steve holds out the weapon, handle-first. Bucky takes it without a word, wiping Steve’s blood off on his shorts.   
“Steve, I’m sorry, it was instinct, I was protecting her,” he stammers, and it’s the first time in two weeks that I’ve seen him nervous, or apologetic.  
Steve waves his hand dismissively. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry about it.” His voice is flat, emotionless.   
Looking at Bucky, I can physically see his mentality change. His brow relaxes and his grimace dissipates. His eyes, previously fearful are now empty of any emotion. It’s like now that the immediate concern is assessed, he no longer has reason to care. His face has adopted the full intensity of the Winter Soldier stare, and it’s honestly pretty scary. “Why are you here?” His voice matches Steve’s, and the question comes out more like a statement.  
Steve glances at me as I take Bucky’s hand, both in an effort to calm myself down and to try to tether him to this reality, give him some lifeline to hold onto. I’ve never seen him in his Winter Soldier state, thankfully, so I don’t know how it starts or if it can even happen without the trigger words—I don’t know what to do. I’m suddenly faced with the reality of his unpredictability, and how lucky I’ve been having known him for as long as I have without encountering any retrogressions; it’s always been Bucky that’s been in control, not some ghost from the past. I feel my hands start to tremble. A muscle in Bucky’s jaw twitches.  
“Can we discuss this…privately?” Steve suggests.   
“Whatever you need to say, you can say it in front of her.”  
“Alright,” Steve concedes, albeit unhappily. The word comes out harsh, and I become aware of how different he is than the Captain Rogers that I’ve always imagined. In the news, he was always a patriotic, heroic, All-American young man, and I guess I’ve just assumed that he’d be this cheerful, charismatic guy ready to lend a hand to anyone in need. Now I see that’s not the case. Everything about his demeanor shows how cold, stern, and tactical he truly is. Yet, strangely paternal. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”  
“Emily,” I reply. “Do you need me to help with your…?” I ask somewhat awkwardly, motioning towards his shoulder with the hand that wasn’t gripping Bucky’s.   
Steve seems surprised for a moment, glancing down at his shoulder and removing his hand, as if he’d forgotten he’d just been stabbed. His hand comes away bloodied, and his navy uniform is dark and shining. But his mouth is set in a determined line. “No. It’s fine.”  
“Well, it doesn’t look fine,” I argue, momentarily forgetting whom I’m speaking to and the situation we are currently in as my maternal instinct kicks in. Steve’s jaw clenches and he looks from Buck to me. A tiny flicker of regret flashes within me, but I ignore it. I’m not going to be cleaning blood off of my floor.  
I look up to Bucky, whose expression is still worryingly blank. But I’m confident in his ability to stay anchored, and I release his hand. Quickly, before I lose my courage, I cross the living room to Steve Rogers, and gingerly look at his shoulder, pulling back the tough fabric to get a better look underneath.  
Much to my surprise, it’s already begun to heal. I know he’s got the serum to thank, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this drastic. There’s no bleeding anymore, although the wound itself is still open. I maneuver around him and push against his lower back, urging him towards the kitchen. He reluctantly allows me to guide him, casting a confused look back at Bucky, who is still a statue by the doorway.   
Once I have a wet cloth saturated more or less with blood and Steve is significantly cleaner than before, the laceration is mostly healed. I toss the rag in the trash, and go back to Bucky.  
“Thank you. That wasn’t necessary, but I appreciate it,” Steve says in a low voice, and it’s only now that I start to see the noble man that America once adored starting to emerge.  
“It was nothing,” I say, not sure how I should respond.  
“Now, Bucky, I need you to come with me.”  
Bucky doesn’t respond, still staring at Steve with that unnervingly blank expression. I glance between them, and it seems as though they’re at an impasse, neither willing to give in to the other. I’ve only known Steve for less than ten minutes, but I can already see that when you knowingly start an argument with him, you have to have some kind of a plan or else you’re destined to fail from the start. That’s probably what Bucky is doing right this second: coming up with a strategy.  
“What do you mean? Where are you going?” I demand, stepping in with hopes of giving Bucky more time to think.  
“I don’t know yet exactly, I just need him to come with me. He’s in danger.”  
“Don’t you think I know that?” The words come out of my and Bucky’s mouths at the same time, and we glance at each other in surprise.   
“You can’t just hunt me down like this, Steve.” Bucky’s voice betrays his emotionless façade as a tiny bit of betrayal leaks into his tone.  
“You didn’t give me any other option,” Steve protests.   
“Bullshit. You could have let me go. I was doing fine on my own.” I look up at him. “Well, without the Avengers,” he corrects himself. “I was recovering. I am recovered. I don’t do that anymore, you know that.”  
“I know, Buck.”  
“So why couldn’t you just leave me be?” The hurt in his voice reverberates painfully throughout the empty room, hanging in the suffocating silence.  
For once Steve looks taken aback.  
He and I both realize in that moment, I think, that Bucky blames him for needing to evacuate the safe space that he’d worked so hard to maintain and protect. And I guess that makes sense, in a way. Bucky was aware that he needed to escape after learning of the price on his head from the newspapers, and was en route to retrieve his backpack when he found Steve, already in his shabby little apartment, waiting to steal him away. Steve caused the hold up in the building with the German police—if he wouldn’t have distracted Bucky, Bucky could have made it out in time.   
Maybe I blame him, too.  
“I’m not sorry for what I did. I had to know you were okay. Ever since you—“ Steve cuts himself off, worrying on his lower lip. “Ever since you pulled me out of the river, I’ve thought about you. Every single day. I had to know you were safe, Buck.”  
“Oh Steven, you sure are a well-balanced individual, aren’t you?” Bucky bites, and Steve physically recoils. I’ve never heard Bucky be this flat-out mean before. I squeeze his hand and meet his gaze, and he sighs. “I’m sorry. That was out of line.”  
“No, you’re right. You’re right. I should have left you well enough alone, you were doing fine for yourself, apparently.” There’s so much hurt in Steve’s voice, I begin to feel awkward just being in the room. Like I’m intruding on some highly personal moment between the two of then.  
“I think we all need to sit down and cool off for a minute, figure out what’s going on,” I say slowly, looking between the two of them. Steve casts his gaze to the floor and Bucky watches me closely before nodding. He reaches up and places his right hand on the back of my neck before leaving a lingering kiss on my forehead. “Steve, I’ll get you a change of clothes. That hardly looks comfortable,” I say, motioning to his navy stealth suit and retreating to my bedroom to get a T shirt and a pair of sweats from Bucky’s drawer.  
While I’m rifling through the various articles of clothing, I hear Steve murmur, “You love her.” I freeze. I don’t hear Bucky say anything, and I make a show of slamming the drawer closed. I’m not sure why, though. Perhaps so they would think I wasn’t eavesdropping.  
I toss the clothes to Steve, who takes them into the bathroom to change. I hear water running and I can bet that he’s rinsing the remainder of the blood from his torso before pulling on the white shirt. Good thinking.  
He emerges looking considerably less intimidating. More human. More approachable.  
“So who all is after me?” Bucky asks wearily. He’s got an arm draped around my shoulders as I lean into him in our spot on the couch.  
“Other than me? Tony Stark. Prince—er, King T’Challa. The UN. Most world leaders—something like one hundred and seventeen countries, actually,” Steve admits. “They all think you’re the one that bombed the Vienna International Center.”  
“It wasn’t me,” Bucky repeats, and I squeeze his knee comfortingly.  
“We know, baby,” I say softly.  
“What are your plans? You’re a fugitive too, now, aren’t you?” Bucky asks.   
“I know someone that can help me lay low for a while. Someone on the inside that can give me a heads up if S.H.I.E.L.D. starts to catch a whiff of me,” Steve replies.   
“And I would, what? Follow you around? Living in paranoia?” Bucky persists.  
“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing? But alone?” Steve asks. He looks to me. “No offense.”  
Bucky shoots him a glare before moving the hand he has on my shoulder to smooth down my hair absentmindedly. “It wasn’t like that anymore…” he trails, exhaustion lacing his voice. “I had…mastered the art, for lack of a better expression. I had a system. A routine. I felt safe, like I belonged in society again for once. Especially after I met Emily. I don’t know what I would have done that day if I hadn’t had her. I would probably be sitting in a prison cell. Or worse.”  
I look up at him and kiss his cheek gently, his scruff scratching my chin pleasantly. “I’ll always be here for you,” I assure him. “For anything.”  
“But that’s the thing,” he began. “You can’t be, not all the time. I don’t want you to be. I’ve seen…done…horrible, inhumanly cruel things. I don’t want to expose you to that, ever.”  
I open my mouth to argue, but Steve cuts me off. “He’s right. I was frozen in a world torn apart by war, and it seems like ever since I woke up, nothing changed other than the weapons we fight with. Things are nastier. People shouldn’t see the things we fight to protect you all from.”  
I know that he’s right. The world has gone to hell in a hand basket lately, it feels like. “I hate being useless,” I say after a moment of silence.  
“You’re not useless,” Bucky argues. “You’ve helped me more than you could ever know. I’ll never be able to repay you. You made recovering so much easier than it would have been. Because of you, I know who I am, what I stand for.”  
“You don’t have to repay me. I’m in love with you.”  
“And I love you, but…” he trails. “I’m gonna need you to sit this one out.”   
I sit up and shrug his hand off of me. I feel as though a piece of my chest has been torn out, like my throat is on fire, like there’s water in my lungs. I’m so defeated that I can’t even cry. I just sit there, gaping at him like an idiot.   
“I’m sorry, Emily. I can’t have you getting hurt,” he says, and yet again, I recognize the finality ringing in his voice. “You’re too important for me to lose. I could never forgive myself.”  
I stand up and march into the bedroom, collapsing onto my bed like a child throwing a tantrum, but I don’t care. Bucky is leaving me and there’s nothing I can do to change his mind. A shuddering sob wracks my body, and all of the deeply buried worry and anxiety and fear that I’d kept bottled up for the last two weeks seems to explode out of me in one painful, torrential downpour of tears.   
I’m vaguely aware of Steve and Bucky talking in hushed voices in the living room, and they soon fade. The sound of footfalls entering the room prompt me to try to start settling down. I feel sick to my stomach with the intensity and suddenness with which all of these emotions struck. Will they even tell me where they’re going? Probably not.  
The side of the bed dips down and a hand lands softly on my lower back. Expecting it to be Bucky, I ignore it. But when Steve’s voice sounds from above me, I quickly look up, aware of how dreadful I must look right now. “Emily, I’m so sorry that it has to be this way.” Unable to speak yet, I just stare at him, still gasping unsteadily for air. “You’ve done so much for him. For me, just by taking care of him. If anyone is in your debt here, it’s me. You looked out for him when I couldn’t, and there’s nothing I can say or do to thank you enough.”  
“You could let him stay here with me,” I hiccup stubbornly, earning a frustrated, exhausted sigh from Steve.   
“Stop. You know I can’t.” His cold gray-blue eyes bore into mine. “I think you’ve known he wouldn’t be able to stay for a while now.”  
He’s right. And I hate him for it. I’ve hidden him for as long as I can. I tried protecting him and I failed. What was I thinking? How could I possibly have kept the most wanted man in the world (presumably) hidden from the most well-trained and well-resourced agencies in the world? I’ve been a fool, and it’s embarrassing thinking about it now.  
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Steve says, as if reading my mind. “I don’t think anyone could have done a better job than you. You gave him exactly what he needed. You gave him a fresh start, Emily.”  
I sigh out one last shaky breath and sit up, hugging my knees to my chest. I look over at the clock on my nightstand. It’s 03:10. “I tried my hardest.”  
“Believe me, it shows. After talking with him just now, I almost feel like he’s better adjusted to this modern world than I am. Don’t tell him I said that, though,” he says, smiling weakly. I chuckle half-heartedly and he rests a large hand on my knees.   
“When are you two leaving?” I ask, facing reality.  
“Tomorrow morning. Well, later this morning, actually. Around 10:00, probably. I told him that’s when I’d be back to get him.”  
“Wait, he can stay the rest of the night?” I ask incredulously, my mood lightening almost immediately.  
Steve nods. “And I have a phone for him. An encoded phone. One for you, too, so you can stay in contact without having to worry about your calls being traced or hacked. It’s completely safe.” He pulls a rather crummy-looking flip phone out of the pocket of his sweatpants and offers it to me.   
I take it gingerly, as if it were the most fragile thing on the planet. I look back to him and say, “Thank you. So much, Steve.” I feel tears start to fall again, but out of relief this time.  
“It’s the least I can do,” he says, smiling genuinely and rising to his feet. “Well, I’ll head out, then. I’ll uh, bring the clothes back later.”  
“Keep them for all I care. They’re Buck’s anyway,” I say, and he smiles briefly.  
“Alright. I’ll tell him he can come in now. Um… It was nice meeting you.” He holds out his hand for me to shake, but I use it to pull myself up off the bed instead. His brows furrow in confusion, and I wrap him up in a huge hug. After a moment of hesitation, his hands settle against my lower back and he leans down to rest his chin on my shoulder. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”  
I pull away and give him one last smile before following him out into the living room. Bucky stands up and walks over to us, taking a deep breath and looking at Steve. “Don’t come back too soon.”  
“I’ll try. Don’t do anything stupid until I get back,” Steve says, and there is a moment of understanding between the two. They both smile cheekily, as if reminiscing on an inside joke or something.  
“How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you,” Bucky grins.  
“You’re a punk.”  
“Jerk.”  
They shake hands, and laugh. Steve turns to leave and Buck follows behind, locking the door after him. When he turns to face me, his face is void of all signs of cheer.  
“Come on,” I say softly, holding my hand out. He takes it and lets me lead him back to bed. We climb in together and he quickly wraps his arms around my midsection, pulling me backwards against him. His chin finds its way into the crook of my neck and one of his legs wriggles between mine.  
We’re both silent for a while, until he whispers, “I’m so sorry.”  
“James Buchanan Barnes, we both know this is for the best. You don’t have to be sorry. Please don’t blame yourself for this,” I plead, and his grip around my waist tightens momentarily.   
“Okay.” His tone is resigned, and I know that he does blame himself. But I also know that right now, I can’t say anything to convince him otherwise. He just needs more time. For now, all we can do is revel in each other’s presence while we still have time left. There is another long silence. “You know what? No. I’m not going to just lay here when there’s something more constructive that we could be doing right now,” he says out of nowhere.   
“What—“ I begin, but I’m cut off when he silences me with a kiss. Oh.  
He turns me over so that I’m on my back and he’s on top of me in a fraction of a second, with borderline catlike agility. In a few more seconds, he has my pyjama shirt off and on the floor, along with both of our pairs of shorts. There is an urgency thrumming through us that I’ve never felt before, and it takes my breath away, and we move together like waves crashing onto the shore, like the wind through the trees, like thunderheads rolling in the sky during a storm. Electricity crackles between us, and every square inch of my skin feels like live wires, sparking and burning against everything I touch. Everything I feel, everything I hear, everything I smell, everything I taste, is all him. It’s sensory overload in the best way imaginable.

At 10 o’clock sharp, there is a rapid knocking on the front door that jostles us from one of the deepest sleeps I’ve ever experienced. I stretch and become pleasantly aware of how damn heavy my entire body feels. Bucky stretches as well, groaning as he yawns.  
“I think I’m actually sore,” he admits, chuckling to himself.   
“Imagine how I feel,” I groan, withdrawing into a ball under the sheets. “I don’t have any serum to help me out of this.” He laughs genuinely at that, whipping the comforter back on his side and slipping out of bed. He pulls on the basketball shorts he’d had on and pads silently to answer the door. I hear Steve’s voice, and the two of them have a quiet, brief conversation. I pull the sheets off of the bed with me as I get up, wrapping them around me with one hand and running my fingers through my severely untamed hair with the other.  
“Good morning, Emily,” Steve says, voice faltering slightly when he sees the state I’m in. He actually blushes.   
“Hi, Steve,” I say pleasantly, making my way over to Bucky, who wraps his arms around me contentedly.   
“I’m glad you two had a good time, uh, fondue-ing last night.”   
Buck and I exchange a curious look, and Steve waves his hand dismissively.   
“Never mind. It’s just cheese and bread.”  
The three of us laugh, and Bucky lets go of me. I hurry back to the bedroom and throw on a T shirt and shorts before coming back out. “Do you want me to fix you up some eggs and toast before you two head out? Maybe some bacon?”  
“No time, unfortunately,” Steve replies. “Strict schedule. Short time window. You know the drill.” He looks at Bucky, who nods understandingly. “Thank you, though.”  
“When will I be able to see you guys again?” I ask, mood quickly dampening.  
“I’m not sure. I’ll call you tonight, no matter what,” Bucky says quickly, already attempting damage control.   
“You’d better.”  
He makes his way over to me and hugs me tight again, leaning back far enough to kiss me, deeply and passionately enough that I feel the pure need behind it deep within my bones. We pull apart, and I go and give Steve another hug.   
I reach up on my tiptoes and whisper into his ear, “Please look after him.”  
He nods against my hair before pulling away. “Of course.”  
Bucky disappears into the bedroom for a moment and reappears dressed in a long sleeved shirt, one of his Henley shirts over that, and a worn leather jacket over that. The layers make him look a bit like a marshmallow. He reaches down and clips his backpack straps across his chest and breathes deeply. “Ready?”  
“Ready,” Steve repeats. They both walk out of the front door, and I linger in the doorway, not wanting them to leave just yet.  
“I love you,” Bucky says, turning back.   
“I love you, more.”   
“I’ll call you.”  
“I’ll be waiting.”  
He presses one last kiss to my cheek before turning and walking after Steve, who turns back and salutes me. Bucky pauses and spins around. “Stay out of trouble.” He smirks and adds, “Don’t get caught.”  
I smile and raise my hand and wave after him, and they disappear around the corner of the hallway for good.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed my first trilogy! like always, comments and feedback are always welcome! xo


End file.
